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Recovering the Subject Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia - Subaltern Studies. Writings on South Asian History and Society. Edited by Ranajit Guha. Oxford University Press: Delhi. Volume I, 1982, pp. viii, 241; Volume II, 1983, pp. x, 358; Volume III, 1984, pp. x, 327; Volume IV, 1985, pp. vi, 383.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Rosalind O'Hanlon
Affiliation:
Centre of South Asian Studies University of Cambridge

Abstract

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Type
Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 Edward Said, ‘Orientalism reconsidered’ in Barker, Francis et al. , Literature, Politics and Theory: Papers from the Essex Conference. (Methuen, London 1986), p. 223.Google Scholar The most useful recent statement of the difficulties of representing non-European ‘others’, which draws on the themes of post-structuralism, is Clifford, James and Marcus, George (eds), Writing Culture: The Politics and Poetics of Ethnography (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986).Google ScholarGood critical introductions to these themes are Harland, RichardSuperstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism (Methuen, London, 1987)Google Scholar and Fekete, John (ed.), The Structural Allegory: Reconstructive Encounters with the New French Thought (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1984).Google Scholar

2 For a recent exploration of these arguments, see Medick, Hans, ‘“Missionaries in the Row Boat”? Ethnological Ways of Knowing as a Challenge to Social History’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29, 1, 1987.Google Scholar A provocative argument in favour of the value of ethnographic work for social history within the South Asian context is Dirks, Nicholas B., The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

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7 See, for example, the review article byGupta, Dipankar: ‘On Altering the Ego in Peasant History: Paradoxes of the Ethnic Option’, Peasant Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (Fall 1985), p. 15. I thank Majid Siddiqi for bringing this article to my attention.Google Scholar

8 Most notably, of course, in the debates surrounding the work of E. P. Thompson, since his publication of The Making of the English Working Class in 1963, and in his exchanges with British Marxist historians who had drawn on the work of Louis Althusser. See especially Thompson, E. P., The Poverty of Theory, and Other Essays, Merlin (London, 1978);Google Scholar and the riposte by Anderson, Perry: Arguments within English Marxism, New Left Books (London, 1979).Google Scholar

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20 See the collective review of Subaltern Studies II, in Social Scientist, no. 137, 10 1984, p. 12.Google Scholar

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24 Ibid., p. 153. See the criticism of this essay in Social Scientist, no. 137, 10 1984, pp. 23–9.Google Scholar

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28 Ibid., pp. 134–5.

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30 Ibid., p. 10.

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36 See the review in Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 22, no. 1, 1985, p. 94.Google Scholar

37 Guha, Ranajit, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1983), p. 13.Google Scholar

38 Guha, Ranajit, ‘On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India’, p. 8. The emphasis is the author's.Google Scholar

39 Guha, Ranajit, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency, p. 3.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., p. 334.

41 Ibid., p. 18.

42 Especially in Fanon's, Black Skin, White Masks, translated by Markman, C. L. (Grove Press, New York 1967)Google Scholar, and, of course, in Said's, Orientalism (Pantheon Press, New York, 1978).Google Scholar

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49 Ibid., pp. 131–2, footnote 106.

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51 Ibid., p. 225.

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63 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, ‘Conditions of Knowledge for Working-Class Conditions: Employers, Government and the Jute Workers of Calcutta, 1890–1940’, SS II, 1983, p. 308.Google Scholar

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67 Chatterjee, Partha, ‘More on Modes of Power and the Peasantry’, SS II, 1983, p. 343.Google Scholar See the exchange between Chatterjee and Sanjay Prasad on these points, in Social Scientist, no. 141, February 1985, and no. 151, December 1985.

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75 See their reviews in Social Scientist, no. III, 08 1982, and no. 117, February 1983.Google Scholar

76 Chatterjee, Partha, ‘Modes of power: Some Clarifications’, Social Scientist, no. 141, 02 1985, pp. 56–7.Google Scholar See also his tribute to Althusser, in the Preface to his Bengal 1920–1947: The Land Question, CSSSH Monograph (Calcutta, 1985), pp. xviii–xxxv.Google Scholar

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78 Cohn, Bernard S., ‘The Command of Language and the Language of Command’, SS IV, 1985, p. 283.Google Scholar

79 Ibid., p. 329.

80 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, ‘Conditions for Knowledge of Working-Class conditions’, p. 262.Google Scholar

81 Ibid., pp. 289–91.

82 Ibid., pp. 294–310.

83 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, ‘Discussion: Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography’, SS IV, 1985, p. 345.Google Scholar

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